AN: See, I am still writing.
Chapter Twenty Five: Journey Time
Harry's peeler dropped unceremoniously into the sink when he felt Severus come through the Floo. He turned with a greeting on his tongue but the man's face was like thunder; all darkness and anger, and Harry felt apprehension race through him. To be fair, Malfoys did that to him too, but he hadn't expected it from Severus. The air was knocked out of him, just enough to make him grunt, and he gripped the sides of Severus' robes, returning the tight pressure of a comfort-seeking hug.
His arms were tight across Harry's shoulders and Severus' head dropped against his hair so that Harry could just about feel his tense breath on his ear. His magic was riled, swimming just above his skin and draping over Harry protectively.
"Malfoy's, eh? Who needs em... You alright?" He muttered quietly enough that Mrs Weasley wouldn't hear, rubbing a thumb over Severus' spine.
"With Lucius imprisoned, there is little chance they could truly injure me, but yes, I am fine." Severus heaved a sigh and loosened his grip. "I must speak to Dumbledore immediately."
Harry stepped back, giving him a raised eyebrow that said clearly that Severus would not get away without telling him at some point, to which Sev nodded discretely and squeezed Harry's shoulder. "Should I be ready for a Meeting this evening?" He asked, deliberately avoiding looking at Mrs Weasley; they were fairly sure that she was at peace with their relationship, but it was still... odd, particularly for Harry.
"I shouldn't think so; this is deep-cover information, it is unlikely to change anything immediately."
"Alright. I'll see you in a few hours, then."
Once he had gone back through the Floo, Harry stared into the fire with a pensive expression; Severus' behaviour hadn't been very Snape-like at all. It wasn't until Mrs Weasley gave his shoulder a squeeze that he looked away.
"You're doing a good job Harry, now, come finish the potatoes or Ron and Bill will eat us out of house and home." He nodded and went back to the sink, mulling quietly to himself as Mrs Weasley chattered on. "The Twins are having a 'business dinner', who would have thought! But there you have it; they need permission to decorate from the owner of the store opposite-"
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
"I think we need a green spell." Harry said rather abruptly. Hermione was working on a Transfiguration theory that Harry hadn't even heard of until she started riffling through the Library and took a moment to resurface from a particularly large tome.
"What?" she said after a moment, blinking.
"Think about it like this; the Killing curse cannot be blocked, reflected, countered, or shielded." He explained, catching Ron and Ginny's attention from their game of Go Fish played with an Exploding Snap deck; a risky endeavour at the best of times. "If we're here, learning blocking and countering and then all of a sudden we're in a skirmish and there's green light that absolutely cannot be blocked, we need to dodge, conjure obstacles, anything except automatically shield. So, we need a spell that has green light to train with."
Hermione shuddered but agreed immediately, "I'm sure we can find something benign. What colour is the cuciatus?" She turned her eyes towards the ceiling, chin in hand,
"Red, but not like stupefy, sort of... less yellow. Crimson?" Harry wagered,
"How about the Hair Hex? The spell-light is the same colour as whatever you're thinking of at the time." Ginny said, "The Twins know it, but I've never been able to get the wand movement out of them."
"I'll ask. If I explain, they'll come to Hogwarts and teach everyone themselves." Harry said with a wry tone. Hermione shook her head and went back to her book while Ron snorted in response;
"'alright for some," he grumbled, and Harry threw a scrap of parchment at him.
"Oi, I spent half a day as a heron you know, and got kidnapped by Snape so he could reverse engineer the potion."
Hermione raised an eyebrow, briefly looking up from her book again. "Why didn't he just ask? The Twins are always looking for ways to get into his potions cabinet; they'd capitulate."
"Why does Mr Weasley do the cross-word? He likes the puzzle, far as I can tell." Harry said, quite truthfully, and doodling idly on the edge of a transfiguration array until Hermione's quill slapped him on the back of the hand.
"Can we not talk about Snape right now?" Ron whined, flopping back in his armchair.
"Do you think he would help us with our Occlumency?" Ginny mused, ignoring Ron completely and twisting to look over the back of her armchair at the table where Harry and Hermione were working.
Harry shrugged and Hermione huffed at him; "Well, it can't hurt to ask."
"Really? You actually believe that?" Ron muttered, moving his chess piece with decidedly more force than necessary; it hissed and pricked him in the thumb with its spear.
Harry tuned out Hermione's rant; Ron wasn't quite as bad about Severus as he had been in the past and Harry wasn't about to push it. His studying was going pretty well now, particularly since Hermione had arrived to help out, and he flipped through his textbook to get to the glossary of runes at the back. Since he hadn't actually taken the subject, Transfiguration arrays were his only use of them, and he couldn't write most of the symbols without something to copy from. After finding the right one, he carefully re-inked his quill and pulled the point across the paper at, what he hoped, was a half-square angle. Hermione had described it in something called 'degrees' but he hadn't taken arithmancy either and it had gone right over his head.
Fortunately, the ink stayed where he put it and he finished the diagram without having to re-do it; he'd just about had enough of transfiguration for the day, and wanted Severus to return already. He hadn't made it back for dinner, and it was already getting late.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
The house was mostly asleep when he did, finally appear, and only Harry was up, sitting by the kitchen fire and sipping mulled cider. They sat together for some time but by the time Severus had finished recounting his meeting with the Malfoy's and subsequently, Dumbledore, Harry was pacing slowly with a heavy frown.
"And he just wants to let him?" Harry asked incredulously, "That's absurd!"
"He is dying, as much as it pains us, and thus values his life less. He believes Draco is not yet lost, that we must give him space to see the good in the world." Severus said, calm enough on the surface. Harry suspected he wasn't as stoic as all that, however.
"Oh, and if he manages to kill Dumbledore? Then he really will be hopeless! No amount of repentance would free him from that; he probably wouldn't even try." Severus silently pointed to Harry's chair and he flopped back into it.
"I admit that the possibility of Draco succeeding did not arise; the protections around the Headmaster are heavy and powerful." Harry shook his head and leaned forwards with his elbows on his knees.
"Even if he doesn't actually do it himself, when Albus does eventually..." Severus nodded and made a continue motion; it didn't need to be said out loud. "The Dark Lord will be furious, Draco isn't meant to kill Dumbledore at all, but it will look like he succeeded. Vol- uh, Mouldy-Shorts will need another way to punish the Malfoy family, though why he's so intent on that..."
"The man is insane, Harry, Lucius is not. It matters." Their gazes met for a moment and Harry nodded in understanding.
"In any case, Draco would be doomed, the Mark completed and we'd have a Death Eater in the school." Harry said with a sigh, beginning to wonder if letting all Slytherins into the DA was feasible after all.
"There remains one, other, option; Draco is being coerced into this mainly on the threat to his mother; with Bellatrix Lestrange in their holdings Narcissa is protected only by the whim of the Dark Lord, as Bella would quite happily torture her little sister."
"Would she be safer in Azkaban?" Harry asked, semi-rhetorically.
"Perhaps not." Severus conceded,
"Then we have no political leverage form that angle either." Harry admitted, a little disheartened. Severus was watching him with a puzzled look and Harry raised an eyebrow.
"You truly wish to convert Draco, don't you? Why?"
"Malfoy's... Yeah, he;s a dick, but he's important. If we bring him over, then the biggest barrier to hereditary Death Eaters converting would be gone. We'd have to make a fuss about how he was elevating the Malfoy name, throw in terms like 'honour' and... I don't know, how Voldie treats his Death Eaters like shit in general; he doesn't really let you keep your pride, does he?"
"Not in so many words, no." Severus said with a faintly amused smile and they fell quiet for a minute or two, "Draco is not... thrilled, with his assignment; he was never a child to pull the wings off a fly, or to hunt foxes." He continued eventually, his voice thoughtful and slow. "He is rather ignorant, but he has led a sheltered, innocent life. The idea of killing repulses him."
Harry perked up at that and paid attention. "Then he might reject the mission on emotional grounds?"
"His opinions have been poisoned against the Headmaster for twelve years, since he began training to take over the Malfoy Estates, so it is hard to say," he shrugged, "but faced with casting the Killing Curse, he would falter and fail, almost inevitably. It takes more than a desire to protect your Mother to cast such forbidden magic."
"But, there is no way of binding him to us, either." Harry said with a deep frown, staring into the flames. "The advantages are always shifting; he could play the field and do a good deal of damage." That would have been Ron's argument, if dressed up a little.
"The betrayal of the Dark lord would be enough," Severus said, shaking his head with a grim expression that Harry didn't need to look at to know was there, "even the smallest hints that Draco was not as loyal as his father would make him an enemy in the Dark Lords eyes."
"That's true enough; he's a malicious bastard and Draco's a whimp." Harry would have laughed, but this was someone's life they were talking about, a life that it seriously seemed would not be able to save itself; he heaved a sigh instead.
"Come, you melodramatic young fool. There is little to be done before September, in any case." Severus stood and led the way to the corridor. Harry, reluctantly, followed, hovering close in an unspoken question. Severus' answer was not as predictable as he would have liked, but for that night at least, he did not move away and the door to Harry's bedroom closed behind two wizards, not just one.
The fire in his grate was low; just dark embers that heated without shedding much light and they had not bothered with candles or lumos. With the drapes closed over London's orange twilight it was a warm and comfortable sort of dark which brooked no embarrassment as they changed for bed and curled close under the covers.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
Amelia Bones died on the twenty sixth of August, nineteen-ninety six, the third casualty of the Second Wizarding War.
As she did, the Order exploded into chaos.
"Tonks, get Kingsley back from Cardiff, and tell him to put on respectable robes." Dumbledore ordered. The witch was gone in moments, the vacuum sucking papers off the table and into the empty space left by her Disapparition; Harry had cracked the wards wide open, relying on the Fidellus almost exclusively. "Arthur, Hestia; deal with the muggle authorities, if you would. Harry, would you advise? I dare say you would know best how to appease them."
Harry nodded and pulled the two Order members out into the corridor. In the chaos, Dumbledore had blasted Walburga's portrait so hard with a silencing spell that she had come over all dizzy and fallen asleep in her frame.
"Look, tell them it was a gas leak, alright? No, wait, do you have a spell that makes things smell? They'll close off the street and keep everyone away while they do tests, with a sort of box thing, make it beep, ok?"
"If it's the same smell as a potions burner, I'll manage. Gas leak, beeping. Gotcha." Arthur said, looking a little too keyed up to be meeting the Muggle authorities. Fortunately, Hestia Jones was a solemn woman, prim and self contained.
"You'll need muggle clothes..." Harry wondered aloud, "oh, wait, do you have a tie?" Mr Weasley was wearing a tweedish suit under his robes, Ministry smarts, it'd do if they spelled it a dark, indiscriminate colour.
"Oh dear, and wear this without a robe?" Harry nodded, "Well, I, but won't it look odd? Shouldn't I wear some of those 'jeens'? We don't want to stand out!"
"You won't stand out; it's central London, and you're not sixteen. Mrs Jones, do you..." He looked up to find that she had already hung her robes on a coat hook by the front door and started transfiguring her clothes into something appropriate for a corporate wife. "Never mind." They thanked him on their way out the door, a tie summoned from upstairs snaking its way through the banisters after them. "And good luck!"
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
Very nearly everyone in the house was fully occupied by making preparations to return to Hogwarts in the final two weeks of summer, even the elves. Harry was, for the first time in his life, leaving stuff behind when he went. Mostly old clothes, his first set of Quidditch gloves; things that he wouldn't have a use for but didn't really want to throw away and things whose sentimental value meant that he would never throw them away. Dobby was helpful, but left him to it for the most part and reminded him that 'Dobby can always pop back if you leaves'es something'.
He'd already gathered together his notes from their scattered stacks around his room and the library - enough to fill a big lever-arch binder Hermione had lent him – and had surprised himself with how much it was all piled together. He was definitely glad he was using sheets instead of rolls, because that would have taken up a whole trunks worth of space. Though... given how much of his stuff he could get into his trunk these days, a 'trunk full' was apparently not a fixed amount. He was tempted to try and push the sofa from the family room in, just to see what would happen.
He had his own Quidditch armour this year, that'd be nice; it had appeared on his bed one day without a word or note, but Dobby had been particularly cheerful.
"Dobby, you didn't have to... look, here's my purse, don't spend your wages of stuff like this! That's for, I don't know, buying yourself socks and, and, new needles and going on holiday." He'd said, terribly, terribly grateful, but feeling guilt equally strongly.
"Harry James Potter; put your purse away. Dobby's money is for Dobby's happiness'es. Dobby an Elf, Dobby is liking making people happy, but Dobby is also free." He'd stuttered over the next word, but glared at Harry to keep him from butting in again, "I is wanting to give Harry a present. Not for birthday, or Christmas, but for saving Kreacher and Dobby. He is... you is giving Kreacher happiness by being a Good Master, you is giving Dobby happiness by, by, sitting next to him when he drinks tea, and making him birthday cake with colours and showing him how to be free."
Harry hadn't been able to respond at the time and the elf had nodded to himself and vanished, leaving Harry with his new kit. It was bulky stuff, but it had fitted into his trunk like it belonged there.
His plant, which was starting to put out flowers, would be going with Dobby, because Harry couldn't cast the spells to look after it, but it would be fine. He had got pretty attached to it, even if Dobby had taken over watering and feeding it.
By the 29th of August, his room was bare, yes, but not empty. There were old books on the shelves, an owl perch in one corner, and even copies of some of his family photos on the wall. Hedwig watched him over her shoulder, balefully; her cage was sitting on the table ready for the morning. Sure, she could make the trip faster than the train, but he wanted her with him, just in case.
'In case' what was another matter.
The Order was essentially in agreement that the train wouldn't be attacked, it was too hooked in to the Hogwarts' wards, but Harry still felt jittery. After all, Malfoy the younger and his unfinished Dark Mark would be there...
Hedwig screeched at him and pulled her head down on her neck. Harry had no idea how that was physically possible, but her head almost vanished into the puff of feathers on her shoulders.
"Oh come on, now you just look ridiculous..." He smoothed down the feathers on her front and her beak made a brief appearance. "Hey! Ow! There'll be bacon?"
She screeched huffily.
"Look, would you rather go with Buckbeak? Whitherwings."
Hedwig glared, stood up straight and took on her best regal pose.
"Yeah, thought not. You and Crookshanks will have a great time, I promise. Pig's going to stay in his cage the whole time."
Hedwig did not look like she believed him.
XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*XX*
The train was... train-y. The platform as busy as ever, and Harry Potter passed through it all, invisible and far from the circle of his escorts. Severus had spoken quickly, with some disdain at the last Order meeting of the summer, forcing them to accept that it was better that Harry was as inconspicuous as possible and precisely where the Dark Lord would not expect him to be.
Hermione and Ron stood artfully on either side of an empty space, while Harry moved at speed from the Archway to the rear of the train. Once there, he would close the door of the final carriage and draw the blind down/ While he was hidden, he would put the Cloak away and his head would re-emerge from the train, looking as impatient as possible and pull his friends onto the train. A few words with Molly through the compartment window and they would be off, having arrived only a few minutes before the train was due to leave. The Twins had promised that the carriage would be empty. Harry was dreading finding out how they'd managed that.
Indeed, the plan progressed as imagined, with only one small issue; Crookshanks tailed him closely through the crowd, hissing and spitting. This had the fortunate effect of allowing Harry more space to move as people automatically made room for the furious familiar, but as he closed the carriage door, the ginger tom caught his ankle and gnawed on it furiously. Harry couldn't blame him, not really; tail-stepping could in no way be considered polite or comfortable. He could sympathise, his Animagus meditation was truly coming along and Harry's appreciation of his own personal-space was clear in his mind.
The aft compartment was empty enough, only a pair of first-year, as-yet-unsorted, boys sitting by the window, and Harry stuck his head out of the door to wave to Ron and Hermione. The space between them disappeared as if had never been significant and they hurried to the carriage, with Ginny heading off to the left to grab Neville.
"Take your time, guys, no hurry, just me and the lads here." Harry said impatiently, studiously ignoring Hermione's cat. One of the little eleven year olds was failing to suppress his laughter and Harry flashed him a big grin; the kid didn't know what to do with himself after that.
There were eight seats per compartment, so Harry, Ron and Hermione sat next to the boys, leaving room for Ginny and Neville, along with whoever else tagged along.
"Afternoon, kiddies, welcome to the Hogwarts Express," Harry said as he and Ron heaved the red-heads' trunk up onto the luggage rack; the firsties' trunks would do as a card table, for now, they'd move them if they got in the way. One was obviously a wizarding trunk (it watched you, suspiciously) while the other was just a trunk, like Harry's. Neither said much about the owners, who were looking a little overwhelmed. Even Harry towered over them, not to mention Ron, who felt the need to bend his head to keep it from knocking into the luggage rack until he sat down.
The laughing-one was less reserved and spoke up; "Hello. I'm Tristan, you're Mr. Potter, aren't you?"
Harry nodded, hoping that the boy wasn't about to do the whole... fame, thing. "It's nice to meet you, Tristan. And you are?" He asked the other boy.
"Isaac of Gwynedd, pleased to meet you, sir," the littler of the two replied in a quiet voice with a melodious welsh accent.
"Right then, Isaac of Gwynedd and Tristan of knowing-my-name, nice to meet you, etcetera. This is Hermione; she's a Prefect and she knows the whole Library off by heart."
"I do NOT! Harry!" She scolded, before turning to the boys and explaining what a Prefect was supposed to do, and, yes, offering to help them with work-related problems. Ron was too busy avoiding getting a dead arm by stifling his laughter to intervene.